Vista Supports Hybrid Storage Drives, Microsoft Says

Microsoft on Sept. 21 denied claims by hard drive industry executives and analysts that the world’s largest software company isn’t providing optimized drivers for the new hybrid drives about to come into the market. “Microsoft certainly does provide drivers for hybrid hard drives in Vista,” Matt Ayers, program manager in the Windows Client Performance group for Microsoft told eWEEK. “They’ve been in there all along, and they work with any hard drive. I don’t quite understand the issue here. And about ‘optimized’ drivers – we never send out any drivers that aren’t optimized,” Ayers said. In addition, Microsoft has started a ‘downgrade-to-XP’ program for its OEM partners.

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Aaah, but look at the link, sappyvcv. It does not grant downgrade-rights to OEM. Downgrade-rights to OEM is something which is something Microsoft just started. Windows under other licenses than OEM have been downgradable all the time, but this is a first for OEM-versions (with the exception of XP Pro, Windows 2003, Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition, Vista Business and Vista Ultimate).

Your link states following (for applications):

The OEM License Terms for OEM versions of applications software do not grant downgrade rights.

For operating systems:

The OEM License Terms for most OEM versions of systems software do not grant downgrade rights.

and then the exceptions:

The exception is the OEM License Terms for the WindowsÂ® XP Professional operating system and the Windows Vistaâ„¢ Business and Windows Vista Ultimate operating systems, which grant downgrade rights.

And the last missing downgrade-rights:

The OEM License Terms for most OEM versions of server software do not grant downgrade rights.

And the exceptions: The exceptions are the OEM License Terms for the Windows ServerÂ® 2003 operating system products and Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition, which grant downgrade rights.

Good point, has anyone ever expected optimized drivers for their hardware? They already provide a very extensive driver base in order to get things set up, after that it has almost always been up to the user to install the enhanced drivers FROM the manufacturer. I can not think of one instance where there is an expectation of this.

So are they now to do ALL driver development for every piece of hardware?. As orestes says, they just need to “get off their bums and write them themselves”

And more appropriately when has Microsoft ever had any “optimized” drivers at all? They generally just have drivers that provide just the basic functionality of the hardware. The user almost always has to install the drivers that come with their hardware device.

I guess one of the main exceptions would be hard drive manufacturers, but then that usually is the IDE/SATA/SCSI controller that actually controls that, so usually it’s the motherboard or controller card manufacturer who creates the optimized drivers and Windows just has a basic/generic one.

At what point has it ever been the OS maker’s responsibility to provide “optimized” drivers, or any drivers at all really, for third party hardware?

The point in time is from day one … if the OS in question is Linux.

For a long while it was fashionable to criticize Linux for lack of this driver or that when a vendor would not provide Linux developers with specifications to work from.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, and Linux developers have reverse-engineered the majority of hardware, and Linux has drivers for significantly more hardware than Vista does … only now does the defense arise: “since when is it the OS maker’s fault?”.

Funny, it’s my being pissed off with half-assed vendor support on *nix that led to my initial post. It’s not a defense of Vista in particular, it’s a glaring condemnation of lazy vendors pawning off their responsibility onto others.

Your posts can be counted on twisting things around to try to make Microsoft look evil and Linux look perfect, regardless of reality. If your trolling wasn’t so transparent, it would be funny.

In no way is an OS manufacturer/developer responsible for supporting everyone’s devices with drivers they write: an OS manufacturer/developer is only responsible to ensure that the OS can boot off of lowest common denominator hardware, and for that, sometimes external drivers are required. Beyond that, an OS manufacturer/developer is responsible for providing proper documentation for making it feasible for hardware manufacturers to support their own hardware, and you certainly can’t fault Microsoft for that (though your posting history indicates you will try to find some twisted path to do so) because they provide easily accessed documentation for developing drivers, for free.

“ReadyDrive” is the Vista optimization to take advantage of the Hybrid Drive. I’ve been looking for one of those for a while now. I hope they’re coming to market soon. I’m not sure what these manufacturers expect and I feel like the journalist or whomever he spoke to was confused.

What is the “application support for Vista Logo” supposed to mean? To applications, this technology should be completely transparent and they shouldn’t have to do anything to support it. This story looks like baloney.